Few Studies Exist on the Negative Effects of Television and Long Exposure to Artificial Red, Green and Blue Light

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Mander points out, in his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, there is very little research or knowledge on the effects of red, green and blue (RGB) light  on our bodies. RGB light is projected from TV screens, which means television is potentially harmful. PHOTO: FOTOLIA/DEMARCO

An Excerpt from Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander: 

Argument Three: Effects of Television on the Human Being

Television technology produces neurophysiological responses in the people who watch it. It may create illness, it certainly produces confusion and submission to external imagery. Together, the effects of this technology amount to conditioning for autocratic control.

Anecdotal Reports: Sick, Crazy, Mesmerized

During the years I was preparing this book, occasional pieces of publicity appeared about it. With each exposure, mail would arrive in my home. From one article alone I received more than two hundred fifty letters. Most were passionate and troubled. It became clear that watching TV was an experience that an amazing number of people were eager to describe.

I also kept an informal record of the terms people used in ordinary conversation to describe how they felt about television. In all, I recorded about two thousand conversational and written descriptions.

While I make no claims about this amounting to any kind of bona fide scientific sampling, the phrases people chose had a definite consistency. To give you an idea, I'm going to list the fifteen phrases most frequently used.

If you could somehow drop all preconception of television and read this list as though people were describing some instrument you'd never seen yourself, I think the picture you would obtain is of a machine that invades, controls and deadens the people who view it. It is not unlike the alien-operated "influencing machine" of psychopathic fantasy.

1. "I feel hypnotized when I watch television."
2. "Television sucks my energy."
3. "I feel like it's brainwashing me."
4. "I feel like a vegetable when I'm stuck there at the tube."
5. "Television spaces me out."
6. "Television is an addiction and I'm an addict."
7. "My kids look like zombies when they're watching."
8. "TV is destroying my mind."
9. "My kids walk around like they're in a dream because of it."
10. "Television is making people stupid."
11. "Television is turning my mind to mush."
12. "If a television is on, I just can't keep my eyes off it."
13. "I feel mesmerized by it."
14. "TV is colonizing my brain."
15. "How can I get my kids off it and back into life?"